


Carthage: Paris Burning

by Inauladomitiani



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Paris Burning (thecitysmith)
Genre: Paris Burning, city!verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-12 14:30:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1188675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inauladomitiani/pseuds/Inauladomitiani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone knows that no City can last forever. Proof of that was buried under the sands of the North Africa coast two thousand years ago, if you knew where to look. Nobody did, though; none of the Cities alive today remember Carthage.<br/>This is a story about Ancient Carthage and how he burned, and what happened after he burned, for the CityVerse created by the wonderful thecitysmith.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Carthago Delenda Est

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this seven months ago when I began to read Paris Burning and should have been revising for my Latin GCSE; the two merged and I was left with the story behind Cato's famous demand, Carthago Delenda Est.  
> But first, thank you to Meeni. (I hope you like it, and comments would be hugely appreciated, please! :D )

**Carthago Delenda Est**

Not even Cities last forever. They all know it, every one of them. But they don’t like to think about it. And it’s easy not to think about it, when you can’t see more than one or two examples in the whole of your history. You can tell yourself it will never happen to you.

None of them remember Carthage.

Almost all the Cities in Europe remember Rome. London (she called herself Londoninium then), Paris, Copenhagen. Oh, they remember Rome alright. The children of Rome could never forget her. They remember her burning, burning at Nero’s feet, the last City of the ancient order.

But what was Rome thinking as she burned? She laughed, at first, before she started screaming. She laughed, because the words of Aemilianus had come back to her. _She told herself it would never happen to her. He told her she was wrong._ It was something Rome carried for the rest of her life; those words, those events, those wars. She carried all her wars, of course, but this one was different.

***

Just as London’s children crossed the globe to Australia, so Tyre’s children crossed the sea to Africa. One of all of them had grown. His name was Carthage. He had seen himself for what he was, convinced his people to follow him, and thrown off Phoenician rule. Then he had prospered. His people spread across the edge of Africa, across the edge of the world. Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, the Balearic Islands, Cyprus, Corsica- all his. He begrudged his children nothing. His pride in them encouraged them to grow; they took colonies and formed empires, dominating trade routes, spreading their political influences and making themselves known on the international stage of the Mediterranean. Carthage would have been a capital, if things had worked that way then, but a City whose people ruled an empire was still no capital without a country. Carthage didn’t mind, though. He had the worship of his people for bringing them to greatness.

Not that it was easy. In those early days of civilisation not even Cities were sure of themselves. Certainly, they weren’t friends. How could you be friends with someone as ruthless as yourself? Carthage used to have friends, or perhaps allies, back when he was a mere colony himself. He remembered dancing with Sidon and Byblos in the palaces of Phoenicia, laughing and spinning in circles, still young and learning in this harsh ancient order. He had the pride of Tyre too, the City he considered his father. But Tyre fell, crushed into submission by Alexander the Great, while Pella stood by the side of her Macedonian Emperor and watched him torture her brother City. That was the moment Carthage grew up. He stirred up his people, and led them roaring and impassioned through the streets and through the years until the city-state of Carthage had the strongest empire in the Mediterranean. He vowed he would never fall to Alexander.

In actuality, Carthage was young to have such an empire, being merely two hundred when it started growing. He felt young, anyway; Tyre was two thousand five hundred years old by the time Alexander came for him. Tyre: Thinking of him made Carthage feel sick. No matter that Carthage was a strong, ebony man, broad-shouldered and muscular from the strength of his armies, with white teeth flashing almost golden with his wealth and hands calloused from decades of holding and throwing spears. His heart had been hardened to all things but that memory. These were the years before true civilisation, no matter what the Cities told themselves. How else could you kill and murder and maim your own so frequently, and so heartlessly? They told themselves not to interfere with the doings of humans, even back then, but when you have no country, and you are just a city-state, it becomes a lot harder. Pella had stood and watched when her brother Tyre, strongest of the strong, ancient, wise, wealthy, magnificent and proud, collapsed to the ground and screamed in agony, the bones in his body wrenched out in places, or otherwise crumbling within him, as the stones of his buildings were torn up and thrown in the sea. He couldn’t die- oh no. His city technically still existed. But nor could he heal. Tyre is a colony of Carthage now, a broken, sick old man with few children left.

And so Carthage is alone. He cannot stand to see the destruction around him, he fears for himself and his people, but he lets them keep spreading because it is safest for them and he is proud of their strength. He will not talk to Pella, or the Persian Cities in the East. His colonies will not talk to him. They are scared of him.

And rightly so. He is ugly in the extreme. His black skin only shows the scars of burns, whips, and a thousand spears piercing his body in a thousand battles more clearly. Thick bronze bracelets clank on his wrists, and a gold snake choker that encircles his neck only half hides the gaping wound he leaves open. He carries his spear with him, and dresses in rare furs. Sickness and disgust are drawn in every line of his face, the deaths of too many of his people in battle are written in his eyes. He is intimidating in his appearance, and this he uses. He does not want war, but war there is and in war he fights and kills constantly. This is how he tries to drown the memory of too many deaths; by avenging his dead citizens.

And in the end, it works. He does not fall to Alexander. He does not have to face Pella, and look her in the eye after what she let happen. He knows he would not be able to do that without ripping her to shreds.

***

He is not friends with Rome, of course, but he has heard of her: The grotesque, glorious goddess with blood under her nails, who fights like a lion and plants fires in the hearts of her children, who has swept up the people of her nation and flung her power wide across Europe. Rome has seen much, but he has seen more. Rome is but a child to him. No matter they are nearly the same age; she is weak and her empire is small. He has grown old and tall, and his empire is large.

But then his colonies join her. Afraid of the threat of his wrath, they turn to Rome and slowly, slowly, she begins to grow as Carthage begins to shrink. The two empires make a treaty, and another. But it doesn’t help. They are fighting over Sicily, always Sicily. The Roman senators are greedy and hungry for control of the Mediterranean. Carthage becomes desperate and angry. There are more wars now, the Punic Wars, and he fights in them all, a bloodthirsty fury thundering through his veins, the pain of the wounds of all his army shaking his body. It is not enough. True, sometimes they win the wars and he brings his armies home with savage pleasure. He will do anything to protect his people. But more frequently they lose the wars. It takes decades, many drawn-out years of feeling the torment of his citizens grow. And then comes the war to end all wars. It is one Roman general, Aemilianus. He is young and intelligent, and Carthage knows he is dear to Rome. Rome herself is growing by the day. She is far more powerful than he could have thought- and her senators, her senators are more insistent than he ever dreamed, insistent in his destruction. Aemilianus comes to take his city. He sieges it, and pulls out their warships to burn them in front of the harbour- and then the soldiers enter and charge from house to house, the buildings burning in their wake. Every citizen fights and Carthage is proud of them. But he is furious too, that anyone has dared enter his city and take his people. He fights, and the city helps him fight, cornering the Romans in dead-end alleys and twisting the streets to confuse them, but there are simply too many of them. When the end comes, it finds Carthage in the temple within the citadel, herding his children away from the fire that rages outside the door even as he feels it searing across his skin. He runs up the staircase to the roof, skirting fallen boulders and looking out from the edge over the expanse of his once mighty city.

He didn’t fall to Alexander, in the end. But he fell nonetheless. He can hear his people screaming. He can feel his children being torn from him as they are put in chains to be slaves, each one like the tearing of skin from his back- it brings tears to his eyes, and he can feel the flames devouring him, razing the ground and scorching across the ruins…

He vowed to never let this happen. But it has happened, and here he is. He is standing on the roof of the citadel and he can see Aemilianus, just beyond the wall. He fixes his gaze on the general. The man sees him as the smoke clears; a solid dark figure amid the flames, feet firmly planted on his crumbling building, powerful and intimidating even at the moment of his defeat. It is an image that will haunt the general forever. Carthage makes eye contact with Aemilianus. He looks and does not stop looking as the explosion in his heart tells him that the final survivors have jumped into the fire in the temple, and the searing pain spreading up his torso tells him that he himself is on fire. He raises his arms slowly, until they are flung wide to embrace his end; and by this he is sending a message back to Rome, and Aemilianus’ face tells him she will get it. She has murdered him, by standing by and doing nothing while her bloodthirsty senators hounded him. She has murdered him, and she must remember him. In this, Carthage is merciless. He will not let her forget this. Aemilianus’ face is streaked with tears.

And this is how Carthage dies, arms spread, standing fierce and proud and harsh on the roof of the citadel as flames swirl up his chest. He does not relax his pose as the fire licks along his fingers, as the smell of his own body burning fills his nostrils and the hot white heat blinds him. It is torture, it is excruciating agony, yet he does not scream. He bears the pain for the sake of his people and everything his city has ever been. And as he reaches his breaking point, when he can no longer bear to stand as he burns alive, tears streaming from his sightless eyes, the citadel beneath him crumbles and collapses with a roar so loud Rome looks up from her frescoes far away on Palatine Hill and stares uneasily towards the sea. Carthage goes down with the building, plunging into a fiery burning hell and the last walls of the temple within fall with a thunderclap.

***

Aemilianus returns to Rome and tells her his story. He tells her he cried as he watched the destruction and he tells her that he shudders to think that one day someone may see the same thing happen to Rome. She laughs and tells him it will never happen to her, she will never let it, but he just looks at her, and tells her she is wrong. And when Rome falls burning at Nero’s feet, she remembers this and she remembers Carthage, and she laughs because she knew it was always going to be this way, that she was always going to end up wreathed in flames as her city crumbled, because that was the message Carthage sent her.


	2. And the Great Man Left Carthage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Death is difficult for Cities. Sometimes it doesn't stick." Carthage died, but he didn't Die. He makes a different decision.  
> This one is also for Meeni. Again, please leave a comment and I hope you enjoy!

 

Carthage lies in the red-hot dark of the temple. Fires blaze around him. He can hear the thundering collapse of the rubble; feel himself lying on the rocks and the fiery pain that covers every inch of him, the burning skin and the shattered bones. He chokes on the smoke in his lungs. A sense of nothing washes over him as death creeps slowly up his body before the pain intensifies, flowing out of his destroyed form with his life’s blood and into the ruins of his once mighty city. Each beat of his heart is a knife wound. Around him, the agony of his dying moments cripples the walls and alleys, pouring raging torment into the city’s bones, and he exhales for the final time as the last of the pain leaves him empty, a shell of the great empire he was.

The place is dark. That is all Carthage knows. This… whatever, _wherever_ it is, is dark and senseless, and a dim red glow seems to emanate from the very air. Everything- everything is hazy...Is Carthage sure this is happening? He walks forwards- _he can walk! How can he walk? He is dead_ \- looking around. Three black doorways loom before him, doorways that cannot be real, doorways blacker than tar or night or the end of the universe. _Where is he?_

Outside the city, everything is silent.

Inside the city, the grief and fury explode in the hot air. The buildings growl and crumble, the streets scream out as the blood runs blistering over their stones and the winds howl, fanning the flames, carrying words across the desolation. “ _Blood_ ,” they roar. “ _Fire. Vengeance_.”

There is no light inside the temple. Carthage cannot see anyway. (But he sees the doorways.)

The sea beyond the city roils and crashes against the walls. It sucks in the sand, and belches out huge waves that pound along the shore. In, and out. In, out. In…

…Out.                                                                                                                                                    

A grey figure stands in the surf. Great waves break harmlessly over him; cold eyes look out over the smoking city, look out from a mottled face of skin slick with seawater. Blue-green shadows shift on clammy limbs. Slimy hands push the ocean from his shoulders, and he steps forward.

There is nothing beyond the middle arch. The heat is smothering him and no matter how hard Carthage searches into the scorching, thundering darkness the nothing will not give him answers. He screams his desperation (with a voice he does not have). Carthage cannot decide. He doesn’t want to decide, he doesn’t know _what_ he’s supposed to decide. He has died full of hate and grief and anger for the soldiers who tore away his people, for Aemilianus who ordered them to do it, and for Alexander, always Alexander, who was everything he hated. But more than anything he hates the Cities. He wants blood, fire, and vengeance.

“ _Alexander_ ,” the buildings howl. “ _Pella. Rome_.”

Atlantis steps through the gates with bits of seaweed in his long, straggled hair as the storm of pain and fire whirls past the walls. The ocean floods in through the mercantile and military harbours, pushing into the city, trying to sink it. Panic rises in Carthage; he feels the water swirling in his stomach and senses damp footprints being pressed into his skin. Then seawater drips from Atlantis’ clothes and puddles on the ground, trickling into the houses, sinking into Carthage’s bones. The panic calms. It quells the pain as well, leaving only cold, cruel hatred. More drops. Carthage’s eyes are drawn to the doorway on the left.

“ _Alexander._ ”

And then.

Carthage forgets he loves his people. He _hates_. He wants to rip and maim and murder and in the end they were so _weak,_ so useless, those pathetic humans who sobbed as chains dragged them away. If it weren’t for them he could have lived forever; he could have taken all the land between here and the end of the world for his empire; he could have been invincible. But there is more, so much more. He would have stridden across the Mediterranean and dragged Rome from behind her walls to burn her before her snivelling humans. He would have done the same thing to Pella. He would have turned on Byblos too and destroyed her, and lashed out at all his old colonies and stamped them into the ground. Fury pounds in his veins where blood once flowed. With his new hate he opens his mouth (what mouth) to bellow his bloodlust as the flames leap higher and hotter and the wind flings his anguish into all the corners of the city. The raging storm worms its fingers between crumbling pillars and into cracked alleys, grasping for every piece of Carthage to feel its urge to destroy.

The wind rushes down one cramped alleyway and brushes against a huddled figure.

The figure gasps.

Carthage freezes.

Shock comes first. Atlantis, the swelling sea, his fiery ruins, all are abandoned in a heartbeat as Carthage’s mind narrows to the one impossible creature who has stayed with him when all else have died or left. At first, he can do nothing but reach out to the person in the street. It’s his instinct, after all. He doesn’t even catch himself doing it until he is inside their mind.

(Atlantis is somewhere near- he is in the mouth of the alleyway. He holds himself still, very still, and lifts his head to smell the air. The storm has paused, he notices. Why?, he wonders. The hate is still there, but it is buried beneath something.)

The person in the alley is just a child. A vulnerable, injured child. An innocent one. Sorrow hits Carthage like a hammer blow, but still he cannot move. He is incapable of doing anything other than staying with the little thing as sharp high whimpers and hands clutched to a sticky red wound from a soldier’s sword leech the fragile life it has left. He comforts it automatically, pressing a blanket of warmth, caring, and love over its small frame. But all too soon, the skin and bones sag against the wall and Carthage has died one more death.

This time, pain comes back sharp amidst the fury, tempering it but rendering his hate in excruciating agony. The roar he was going to release is swallowed by the lump in his throat and he struggles to inhale for a moment. Finally as he breathes in (how?) to scream anew, a numbing, grief-ridden thought slips into his mind. It seems to him, later, that the child had carried it. It is an innocent’s smile.

That is how he remembers that he loves his children.

The child returns again, but this time there is a woman at his shoulder, smiling down into his face. A tall, strong woman with blood under her nails and nails in her heart. He knows that woman, but he has never seen her face.

And so he knows that Rome loves her children.

And then he realises that Pella loved her children too.

And he understands. They all three would have torn down the sun for their children, and he knows he would have ripped Rome limb from limb, carried Alexander’s head to Pella himself and burned her to the ground.

“ _You are not the only one who has loved_ ,” the thought whispers.

(Atlantis prowls through the streets above. He kicks a small corpse out of his path.)

The grief rushes in like a wave, roaring, tearing through his mind. He cannot forgive, but he understands. As long as his children are in this world, he will be too.

(Atlantis whips around as his eyes flash over the buildings. Something has changed.)

Carthage takes a step toward the arches in his head. Then another.

Atlantis breaks into a run. Every stone of Carthage is radiating heart wrenching agony. The flames are swelling and the roars and moans grow louder as they chase him through the streets. Where his feet hit the ground the seawater evaporates, no longer pooling and seeping into Carthage.

Atlantis runs. He runs and runs, but he runs the wrong way.

He finds Carthage on his knees and elbows in the smoke and stones. He stretches out a hand tenderly. He can still take this one.

“With me.” The words are small, cold, and weighty. “With me.” Compassion oozes from his eyes.

Carthage rises. He is old and broken, but still he stands tall. Muscle has wasted from his frame in the moments since he hit the temple floor, and he is weak now. This shadow of the City tries to raise his head. He shudders and doubles over as this new life takes hold. He passes his hand in front of his eyes and his sight sharpens, resolving the City in front of him into a despicable watery monster. The burns on his skin start to fade and Atlantis glides forward, expecting a clammy, mottled blue to spread up Carthage’s body. But Carthage looks up with strained eyes and voice and hoarsely releases one cracked word.

“No.” Shock hits Atlantis. He is surprised and fearful and angry, but fearful most of all.

“Yes.” He pushes harder and water starts to spread across the floor of the temple- but not across Carthage’s skin. The only water is in his eyes. Another word, stronger this time.

“Leave.” Carthage closes his eyes, not waiting to see the would-be god back out of the temple, turn and with falsely confident steps flee towards the waiting sea. Instead, he sinks back to his knees. He weeps and moans, sobs wracking his body as one by one his people recede from him. It is not for Transcended Cities to have children to love, and so every citizen of the ruined city fades from Carthage’s mind, going where he can never sense them again. He clings desperately to each one as they go, eking out their sorrows and fears, tenderly holding these emotions to his heart while he can, but they slip inexorably away from him until, for the first time in centuries, Carthage is truly alone, clutching nothing but the memories of life. And yet he remains there in the dark on the temple floor, breathing, waiting, gathering himself. When the fire has burned away all the traces of the cold, damp footprints that stink of seawater, he opens his eyes. He slowly lifts himself up, stands straight, and walks out. Out of the ruins, out of the city.

_And the sea became a sea of tears._

_But, as one knows, precisely at the moment_

_of despair, the auspicious wind begins to blow._

_And the great man left Carthage._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title comes from the poem, and the poem is an extract from "Dido and Aeneas" by Joseph Brodsky, which is based on Virgil's Aeneid. The "great man" Brodsky is referring to is Aeneas, but I liked this verse and figured it worked for Carthage too. "Dido and Aeneas" can be found at http://nauplion.net/DIDO.html and I'd recommend a read, it's lovely.


End file.
